Lost in Space: A Reboot
by CalRodgers
Summary: Here is an attempt to revisit the characters of Lost in Space, to provide a back-story for their lives and experiences, and to make them more familiar and accessible to modern audiences. This story has been evolving in my mind for decades and this is my first attempt to put it into writing.
1. Chapter 1

_**Foreword: **I have been a Lost in Space fan since it originally aired in 1965. Over the decades my attraction to the show has evolved as I've grown older. When I was eight, I so wanted to be John and Maureen Robinson's fourth child; Will's little brother and the Robot's "real" best friend. By twelve, it was Penny, (who through the magic of syndication had waited for me to catch up in age), who caught my attention, for some reason, and I wanted to be anything but her brother. In my thirties, with a wife and kids of my own, I began to appreciate the show through John's eyes. Now in my fifties, I've outlived John and Maureen, at least in television-years, and I wonder what the experience must have been like for Major West._

_I also wonder how the whole thing worked? What were the events, the back-stories and personalities that brought these people into that unique situation? Where do science and the laws of physics come into play? Many of the futuristic, whiz-bang technologies of 1965, such as robots, lasers and computers, have become commonplace toys today. The original LIS story was set about 35 years in the future. What if we rebooted the story from the start, setting it another 35 years, or so, hence? Will technology catch up to the potential of the Jupiter 2? What would life for the Robinsons of 2050 be like compared to the Robinsons of 1965?_

_One final note. If you are reading these words, then you too probably have a deep affection for the Lost in Space story. In this reboot, I will attempt to provide a historical background for the crew and Alpha Control, to modernize the societal roles and social beliefs of the people involved, and to implement real science and existing technology wherever possible. In doing so, I will veer away, from time to time, from the classic LIS canon. Be warned now that there are outright heresies ahead that may shock and dismay the traditionalists. My goal is not to remake the people so many of us have loved for so long, as much as it is to allow them to live again, and to grow and evolve with the times as we have._

**Major West's very bad day**

In the beginning there was darkness and nothing more. In time, the darkness gave way to light, which brought perceptible pain. Throbbing pain that came in short, stabbing pulses. Then the slow drift back down into merciful darkness where the pain could not follow. All too soon the light would return, and with it the searing pain, followed by ever-briefer respites in the cool darkness, until Major Don West was fully conscious. Conscious of the pain. Conscious of every heartbeat, of every ragged, raw breath, of every square inch of his skin that burned with a million white-hot needles. Conscious of a metallic rapping on glass that boomed in his ears like the very bells of Hell.

He could not yet open his eyes, but an opaque, grayish light filtered through the thin skin of his eyelids, bringing the pain. Major West's day was off to a very bad start, and although he did not yet realize it, the best part of this day was already behind him.

**Rebirth**

Whatever they tell you, no matter how many times you go through the process, it never, _ever_ gets easier. If anything, it gets worse with the loss of blissful ignorance. The realities of suspended animation bore very little resemblance to the effortless depictions in the old sci-fi movies. Nothing about real space travel did. Perhaps that's why they called it science _fiction_?

None of the old-time video spacefarers ever had to endure the endless physical training, the days of pre-suspension fasting, the intravenous cocktail of sedatives and preservatives or the numbing effects of the electromagnetic field that disrupted the body's biological interactions at the very cellular level. This was an extremely intense process that affected every last cell in the body. There was nothing pleasant or simple about it. Nothing about it was _easy_. Pilgrims have always paid a high price for the passage.

Once the subject had entered the suspended state, and was deemed stable by the technicians, the process of preservation began. The hatch to the cryogenic tube was sealed and the oxygen pumped out and replaced with pure nitrogen. The temperature was brought down to a few degrees above freezing. The disruptor field engulfed the occupant, minimizing most chemical and electrical interactions on a cellular level but it did not suspend them entirely. This was as close to death as one could get. The very brink of life.

The only part worse than going to sleep was waking up.

_"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?"_ Though barely functioning, the brain still performed some routine functions, albeit very slowly, including occasional dreams. As always, there were good dreams, scary dreams, bad dreams. Nightmares. Over the months or years of suspension those dreams would pile up in the subconscious, with no other outlet, and upon being revived the subject would remember jumbled bits and pieces of them, never quite sure if they were dreams or actual memories.

The physical process of revival was hellish enough, but Don West hated the dreams most of all. While the body would eventually unthaw, reestablishing the old biological patterns of respiration and all of the other functions of living, with time, the adrenaline-pumping fear of the nightmares and the aching longing of the love dreams would always linger on for months afterward.

West was well into the second stage of reanimation, having been warmed through to body temperature again and the energy level of the disruptor field greatly diminished. Long-unused biological pathways, from neurons to capillaries, had reestablished their original patterns. Oxygen had been reintroduced into the cryo-tube and a series of low level electrical pulses had stimulated the heart and lungs into motion until his body could do so for itself again.

The excruciating burning sensation that West endured was from life returning to every individual cell in his body; much akin to the sensation of having one's arm or leg "falling asleep" and the pins and needles that accompany its revival. Regaining consciousness was a promising sign as it indicated that the brain was back on the job and regulating the autonomic functions that living creatures never have to think about.

Under the supervision of a highly trained Reanimation team, Don West could expect to be back on his feet in about a week. The problem was that there weren't any Re-An teams on outward bound missions, and unlike his previous deep sleep experiences, which had ranged from several weeks to several months in length, West and the passengers of the _Jupiter 2_ had been out for over seven years; a new record. It was one of the main reasons that the Robinson family had been chosen for the mission. Dr. Robinson had pioneered the suspended animation process and had volunteered to be on hand to study the effects of long-term disruption firsthand.

But where was Robinson?

According to the flight plan, Dr. Robinson would reanimate first and then assist the others through the process at the end of the flight, starting with the ship's pilot. If West was the first one up there was a good chance something had gone wrong. Don certainly hadn't heard from anyone else since regaining consciousness, except for that infernal rapping.

**Are we there yet?**

With great effort, West managed to move his right thumb enough to activate the second stage recovery systems built into his cryo-suit. Warm moist air hissed softly into his helmet, slowly dissolving the natural accretions that had sealed his eyes and mouth shut over the many months in flight. Eventually West was able to work one eyelid open, though he could see very little beyond a vaguely bright blob on the heads-up display in his helmet visor, a few inches in front of his face. West knew from his earlier flights that his vision would eventually clear and there really wasn't much he could do in the meantime, regardless of what was going on around the ship.

The efforts of moving his thumb and opening one bleary eye had taxed Don West's energies to the limit. A feeling of great exhaustion washed over him and he allowed himself to drift back into the darkness from whence he had come. This time, though, he was slipping into real sleep, the kind of healing, regenerative sleep the space jocks called "the golden slumbers." He'd still feel like crap when he next awoke, but it would be a definite improvement over this first round.

Sensors in the cryo-suit monitored West's brain activity and other respiratory functions. As the Major slept his physical situation continued to improve until it reached the point where the computer decided it was time to introduce some nourishment into his system. Electrolytes and glorified sugar water were piped into his intravenous drip, breaking the long, long fast.

Hours later, or it could have been weeks for all that West knew, he awoke once more, feeling somewhat improved, as though he had only been hit by a two-ton truck instead of the four-ton model. His headache had simmered down to a dull throbbing and his breathing was easier, no doubt in response to the moist air that had been introduced earlier. He reopened his good eye, and with a little bit of a struggle he got the other eyelid up as well.

The bright-ish blob he had seen earlier had semi-resolved itself into a square-ish panel containing several smaller bright blobs, some of which were flashing rhythmically. Some of them might even have been red, meaning that West's sense of color was returning. Pretty.

Once again, the slumbers beckoned and, once again, the Major obeyed them.

The next time Don West opened his eyes he was feeling much better. Sleep really was the greatest healer and he felt stronger after every nap. West forced his eyes to focus on the images on the heads-up display in his helmet, with only partial success. By closing his blurry left eye he could just make out the flashing letters and symbols with his right.

It took the Major a several moments to comprehend that power levels from the ship's reactor core were far below where they should have been upon entering the Alpha Centauri system. If the _Jupiter 2_ had been West's old beater of a _Corvette_ back on Earth, the fuel needle should have been hovering just around two-thirds of a tank. Instead, the _Jupiter 2_ was running on empty and its version of an atomic idiot light had been flashing for a very long time. Something was drastically wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Birth of Alpha Control**

On an unusually warm evening, in the autumn of 1947, a son was born to a construction worker and his young wife in a small hospital in northern New England. That boy and the siblings that followed over the years grew up in remarkable times in a very unremarkable corner of the world.

William James King grew into an average student with a keen mind for mathematics and a love of science fiction. King graduated somewhere in the middle of his high school class, but thanks to the prodding of a favorite science teacher, young Bill applied for and received a scholarship to Pike Technical College to study electronics. At the time, no one on Earth, or several other worlds for that matter, could have predicted how this minor moment in one young man's life would affect the entire future of the human species.

Bill King entered Pike Tech in September of 1965, a small-town boy out of his element in the big city of Pikeville, a booming metropolis of nearly 30,000 souls, including almost 1,200 students, faculty and staff at the college. King was farther from home, in mind and body, than he had ever ventured before and he liked it.

Pike Tech offered Bill King more than he had ever imagined. With the Space Race shifting into high gear, government funding poured in to help train the future scientists and engineers from across all disciplines. NASA and the hundreds of private contractors working to beat the Russians to the Moon were scooping up even the greenest graduates of the nation's technical schools as quickly as they could find them.

King excelled in designing electronic circuitry and reveled in the challenges of making things smaller, faster and cheaper. In the spacecraft of the day, every gram, every microvolt, every millimeter saved was like money in the bank. By 1969, King was part of a team that analyzed the data returned by the telemetry that tracked every aspect of the flight systems for the _Gemini_ and _Apollo_ missions; systems that had not even existed a few years earlier. This was as cutting edge as it got and it was addictive.

Bill King was in one of the back rooms at the Manned Space Center in Houston when Neil Armstrong landed his _Eagle_ on the Moon. Like hundreds of other nameless twenty- and thirty-something technicians, he was far from the choreographed chaos of the actual Mission Control Center, but he manned a monitor that spewed out a steady stream of systems data in real time. In another decade, or so, this function would be performed by a computer, but in 1969 both the US and Soviet space programs ran largely on slide rules and sharp eyes. King's goal was to design the machine that would put him out of a job.

That job wasn't exactly a front row seat to the Apollo missions, King mused, but with a show like this, even balcony seating was pretty darn good.

Bill King saw the _Apollo 11_ landing in July of 1969 not as the culmination of an ambitious adventure, but rather as the next logical step in a procession of logical steps of exploration of the solar system and outer space. Unfortunately, the Space Race was born of political motives, not scientific, and no sooner had Neil Armstrong uttered his famous line, "The Eagle has landed!" then the bureaucrats began to dismantle the costly manned space program. The money was needed elsewhere.

The fickle public began to lose interest in the _Apollo_ program soon after Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were plucked from the ocean after splashdown. In November, 1969, an innocent move by an unknowing astronaut fried the television camera carried by _Apollo 12_ when it was briefly turned toward the Sun. No live images, no public interest. The heart-pounding drama surrounding the explosion aboard _Apollo 13_ the following April briefly recaptured the nation's attention, but it also planted the seeds of doubt regarding the value and risks of sending humans to the Moon. The optimism of Kennedy's New Frontier was giving way to the cynical, self-absorbed Seventies.

By 1971, the two final Moon landings had already been cancelled by Congress and Bill King found that NASA no longer required his services, as well. The news came especially hard as King had married a local Texas girl, May Snow, only four months earlier. Fortunately, the long hours King had put in during the heyday of the program hadn't left him much free time to spend his take-home pay, and with May's job as an elementary school teacher, the young couple was able to scrimp by while he looked for work.

Fortune smiled again on Bill King in the early months of 1972; a college buddy recommended him for a job in a Defense Department lab in Virginia, not far from Washington, D.C. It didn't have the allure of the Space Program, but it paid well enough and he was working on the inertial guidance systems of long-range missiles. While the thought that his work might someday bring death and destruction to hundreds, or thousands or even millions of human beings was sobering, King salved his conscience with the knowledge that his efforts also had many beneficial applications, such as for weather satellites and interplanetary spacecraft.

The DoD job also allowed King the free time and disposable income to enjoy his computer programming hobby in his spare time. Ever the pocket-protected geek, Bill King loved the simple logic that governed the clumsy, hand-written codes that drove the room-sized mainframe computers of the day. "Garbage in. Garbage out" was the programmer's mantra in the early days. If the program didn't perform as expected it wasn't the computer's fault.

The programming codes were called "languages" for a reason, and King was quickly becoming fluent in several of them. He also had a couple of friends in the computer center in the basement of his office building who would sneak his experiments into the queue of programs to be run over the weekends, and every Monday morning they would deliver a small ream of green-bar printout paper to his office for his inspection. King's earliest programs were simple enough: directing the computer to flash a series of lights in a prescribed sequence or performing basic mathematical calculations. As time progressed, King's attention focused on methods of interacting with the computer in real-time, such as moving a point of light on a cathode-ray tube by using a joystick or other hardware.

In those first months of 1973, Bill King had no way of knowing that by year's end he would become the founding father of a company that would change the world forever, and the father of a young man who would change that company in unimaginable ways one day. In October, Bill King prepared to open the doors of his own business, to be called Beta Testing Systems. It was only a last minute word from May that convinced him that his potential customers, government agencies and aerospace companies, might perceive "testing" as a passive pursuit and "beta" as somewhat second-string. King immediately grasped the wisdom of May's advice, as he would uncounted times in the long years that lay ahead of them. William King became the first president of the Alpha Control Corporation, known more colloquially to the world as Alpha Control.


	3. Chapter 3

**Wake-up Call**

Don West was sweating, something he had not done for many years while in suspension. At the moment, it was not knowing exactly how many years that had been supspended that had West's adrenaline pumping. His unconscious mind was automatically processing the information faster than his still-sluggish conscious mind could absorb it. His body was telling him he was in great danger, but West couldn't gather his wits quickly enough to assess the situation. Worse yet, the slumbers were calling him back into the darkness. West felt as though he was falling asleep at the wheel of his speeding '_Vette_, on some lonely strip of highway in the backwoods of Florida. The last thing he remembered was glancing at the chronometer, which read 08:17. And then everything was dark.

The _Jupiter 2_'s clock read 14:22 when West next saw it.

"Wow," he thought, "Just over six hours."

The realization that he had successfully performed a simple mathematical calculation was followed quickly by the fact that he had not driven off the road into some interstellar ditch. The old _J2_ was still cruising along, doing its thing, without benefit or need of its addle-brained pilot.

"Well, not _quite_ so addle-brained," West thought. "At least I can still tell time, assuming it's the same day I fell asleep on."

West resolved to figure out, once and for all, just exactly what day it was. Scanning the chronometer readout with his one clear eye, West caught his breath as the square-ish gray blobs slowly resolved into digits:

04/19/2079

"2079! That's IMPOSSIBLE!" West's mouth moved clumsily, involuntarily, as he tried to give voice to the thought that overwhelmed him. The best he could manage was a coarse, garbled groan.

Don West was not a man given to fits of panic. Years of pilot training had taught him to temper his emotions and to evaluate the situation calmly, coolly and quickly, but this day his mind could not grasp the possibilities.

Squinting with both eyes, West studied the chronometer in his helmet display again, certain that he had simply misread the numbers, but it was not to be. Try as he might, West couldn't will the digits into any other configuration. The _Jupiter 2_ had launched in October of 2047 on a seven-year outward bound flight to the binary star system of Alpha and Beta Centauri. The ship's elaborate version of an alarm clock had been set for September, 2054. If the numbers before him were accurate, Major West and the Robinsons had overslept by nearly twenty-five years!

**Runnin' on empty**

Major Don West could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he forced his brain to make the necessary connections, the necessary calculations.

"Where have we been for the past twenty-five years?" He thought. "Or the past thirty-two years, for that matter? That's a long time to be cruising along at close to the speed of light."

West was further perplexed. "Why didn't the Robot initiate the reanimation sequence when the ship neared the Alpha Centauri system?"

According to the mission profile, the _Jupiter 2_'s environmental control robot was to monitor the ship's systems as it cruised silently toward its destination. If all conditions were nominal at the end of the ride, the Robot would trigger the reanimation process for Dr. Robinson a few weeks prior to arrival in the Alpha Centauri solar system. Robinson would then reanimate the Major in plenty of time for him to earn his flight pay by bringing the _J2_ into orbit around Alpha Prime, an Earth-sized planet known to have a breathable atmosphere and liquid water.

Alpha Prime inhabited that most sought after slice of celestial real estate; not too close to its parent star and not too far away. This habitable zone was naturally dubbed by astronomers as the "Goldilocks Zone." Not too hot. Not too cold. It was just right. Of the hundreds of thousands of extra-solar planets discovered since the mid-1990s, only a small fraction met the magic triad of size, climate and water that would be required to support a successful human colony. Not only did Alpha Prime meet all of the pre-reqs, it was also in Earth's own back yard, a mere four light-years away.

Astronomers had known about Alpha Prime since the early 2020s thanks in large part to an array of highly sensitive space-based telescopes launched by Alpha Control a few years earlier. Everyone knew where Alpha Prime was located, and there was a lot of encouraging data being returned by the AC telescopes, but you can only glean so much from long-range observations. In the 2030s, Alpha Control scientists created the first disruptor field, allowing humans to be successfully, if not comfortably, suspended for years on end. It was a discovery that would remove, or at least significantly mitigate, the greatest barrier to interstellar travel: the great distances involved.

Alpha Control had only been in the space exploration business for a couple of decades when the decision was made to construct the _Jupiter_ series of interstellar spacecraft. AC's greatest innovation had been in bringing the costs of spaceflight down by several magnitudes of order. While the cost of putting a pound of anything into orbit had hovered around $10,000 dollars for the first sixty years of the Space Age, Alpha Control realized that most of those costs were man-made and arbitrary. By turning its vast aerospace and manufacturing industries loose on the problem, Alpha Control was able to bring the price-per-pound into the hundreds of dollars. Space flight still wasn't as cheap as taking the bus, but it was no longer at the mercy of fickle government bureaucrats.

**But Wait... There's**** More!**

The sick feeling in Don West's stomach was giving way to a mixture of frustration and anger. West knew he was in a tough spot but until he got more information about the situation he was helpless to do much about it. Like every nuclear powered submarine, aircraft carrier and spacecraft for the past century, the _Jupiter 2_ relied on a supply of radioactive fuel to generate electricity for the ship. That electricity powered the _J2_'s three-tiered propulsion systems as well as the ghostly blue force-field that surrounded the ship in flight, which was essential for deflecting cosmic rays, dust motes and micrometeorites. It maintained the all-important disruptor fields as well as all of the navigation and life-support systems. While nuclear subs and carriers could operate for years on a few pounds of fuel, eventually power levels ran low and they had to return to port to refuel. Unless the _Jupiter_ was coming up on Earth or Alpha Prime in the next few weeks there wouldn't be enough power to maintain the ship's vital systems, and there were no filling stations in space.

Another sobering thought occurred to Major West. His original mission was to ride shotgun for seven years, deliver the Robinson party safely to Alpha Prime, spend a year on the ground helping them establish a home base on the planet and then fly back to Earth in triumphant glory aboard a _Jupiter 2_ crammed with scientific samples and specimens. The payoff would be enormous and West could write his own ticket for the rest of his life. He'd be a modern-day Lindbergh.

His round-trip would take about fifteen years by the ship's chronometer, though for people back home it would seem more like twenty-two years due to the time dilation attributed to near-light travel. Thanks to the electronic marvels of suspended animation, West would only age physically a couple of years on the trip and most of his family and friends would still be around to welcome him home. Even without time dilation, though, it seemed unlikely that his Dad would still be alive 32 years after the launch. With dilation, it was unlikely that anyone he ever knew on Earth would still be alive by the time he got back, except for those who had been infants or children when he left.

Suddenly the Major was feeling like a very lonely man.

West realized that he had much bigger problems at hand and decided he could postpone feeling sorry for himself until a more opportune moment. The nuclear core power level alarms weren't the only red lights in his heads-up display. Three of the _Jupiter_'s eight inertial guidance gyroscopes were completely off-line and a fourth was definitely wonky. The _J2_'s central astrogator could maintain the ship's stability on as few as three gyros, but all of them had been spinning for more than twice their designed life spans.

"Oh well," thought West, "With any luck we'll run out of gas long before the gyros fail." It was a dark joke, but it was precisely the kind of gallows humor that a veteran flier could appreciate. For the first time in decades, Don West cracked a grin. It hurt.

Another alarm light indicated that the upper deck of the _J2_ had failed to re-pressurize, which ought to have happened as soon as he entered the first reanimation cycle. Normally, the ship's internal atmosphere would be pumped into storage tanks a few hours into the flight to reduce the corrosive effects of oxygen on the electronics and other structures. All of the crew were wearing pressure suits, so the danger was minimal, and West suspected a sticky valve somewhere, but it was just one more problem that he didn't need at the moment.

Fortunately, more of the ship's systems appeared to be operating properly than not, and West could sense the Sandman calling his name once more. A quick scan showed that all of the crew cryo-tubes were functioning nominally, including one of the two empty back-up tubes housed on the lower deck. "Odd, that." West thought before drifting back to sleep. No doubt another malfunction due to the _Jupiter_'s advanced age.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The early years of Alpha Control were much like those of most start-ups. Working on a shoe-string budget, Bill King and a couple of starving engineering graduate students scraped by on small defense project contracts. It was really May's full-time teaching position that kept the roof over their heads in the beginning, and food on the table. Things got even tighter with the arrival of the King's first child, William, Jr., as May was out of work for nearly half a year, but the young people were resilient and muddled through it. Not surprisingly, the time would come when Bill and May would look back on those as "the good old days."

It was during a particularly dark time for King's fledgling company, a very slow period between projects, when opportunity finally knocked. King was on the verge of closing his company and returning to the workforce himself. When he could no longer make even his meager payroll, Bill King offered one of his most promising grad student workers a room in his apartment, and board. Mike Baker had been a college student long enough to recognize a good thing when he saw it; clean sheets and a hot meal. There was only one problem, Baker's longtime girlfriend Katy had recently moved in with him and the two were not about to separate.

Though still in his late twenties, King was of a time when cohabitation without the benefit of marriage was a bit dodgy and not sure if he could condone it under his own roof. In addition, it meant one more mouth to feed. Once again, it was the women who proved the more practical. Katy and May, who had always gotten along famously as they had both shared the peculiar joys of living with "mad scientists," came up with a plan. Katy would serve as a nanny to young Bill Junior so that May could go back to teaching. The economics of it made perfect sense to King, who was thrilled that he could keep his company running just a little longer, hoping for a break.

So many of the momentous events of world history are born of the truly insignificant. An innocuous event, no lesser or greater than the thousand other trivial events of the average day is all it takes to start the snowball rolling. In the case of Bill King and Alpha Control, that event was a casual word over a plate of budget-stretching spaghetti one night. That word was "Pong."

One evening, as the two couples chatted over a plate of pasta, (the third one that week), Katy recounted the events of her day, including a stroll she and Junior had taken for some fresh air. The young woman had wheeled her charge's stroller into a local pizza joint for a cold drink and noticed the craziest thing. Off in a corner of the small restaurant was a tall box with a black and white TV screen and a sign reading "Pong" across the top. About a dozen young people had gathered around the machine to watch as two of them played a game of ping pong on the screen.

"It was wild!" Katy laughed, "They would turn these two knobs to hit a square "ball" back and forth and the machine would keep score right on the screen."

"Sounds exciting," said King cynically, as he scooped up another helping of noodles.

"Well, a lot of people were lined up to play it at twenty-five cents a pop," retorted Katy. "Old Man Morelli never got that kind of a crowd around his pinball machine."

Mike Baker laughed. "We move blips around a screen all day long. Wouldn't it be nice if someone gave us a quarter every five minutes?"

King froze, his fork hanging in midair. Something wasn't quite right. Nobody would pay good money just to move a dot around on a screen. Would they?

"Kate, you say the players control the ball by turning knobs? What exactly do the knobs do?"

"It looked like they both just move a white rectangle up and down on opposite sides of the screen. Those are the paddles, I guess."

"Just up and down? No back and forth or diagonal movement?"

"Not that I saw. You should go down and see it for yourself. You ought to know as much about how it works as anyone," Katy suggested.

Bill King dropped his fork onto his plate with a clang and stood up suddenly. Bill Jr. jumped in his highchair, startled at the noise, and began to cry.

"Baker, let's take a walk."

"What about dinner?" asked May, who was also surprised by her husband's sudden actions.

"I'm full," King said. "Besides, I expect to see the leftovers again as tomorrow's lunch," he smiled grimly.

Baker grabbed up his jacket and bounded out into the cool night air, hustling to catch up with his boss, who was making a beeline for Morelli's pizzeria.

"What's got you all wound up, Boss?" asked Baker.

"I don't know just yet. I have to see this tennis game for myself first," replied King. Mike had worked around King long enough to recognize a brainstorm in progress and knew his job was to keep quiet and let the "Old Man" think. Soon enough King would start bouncing ideas and questions off him, thinking out loud, really, and Baker was as eager for a steady paycheck again as any of them. It had been several weeks since he had seen this much enthusiasm from King.

Soon the two men turned off the sidewalk into Morelli's. Oven-heated air, scented with cheese, basil and tomato sauce wafted over them in a warm wave.

"Hey, Billy… where you been, man?" greeted the owner from behind the counter in a growly but friendly voice. Nick Morelli was one of a very select few who got away with calling King "Billy," King's grandfather being one other. And like Grandad, Morelli was a self-made working man who "didn't take crap" from anyone. Morelli had been his own boss for more than forty years, except for a stint in the Navy during the war, and didn't suffer fools lightly, so when he engaged you at all, especially by name, it was a major compliment. Nick liked the young man, as he was sharp and going places. He thought King treated his people well and he knew how to keep his mouth shut and his ears open, unlike a lot of kids those days. King respected _Mister_ Morelli's accomplishments and had often picked the older businessman's brain over a pizza and beer.

"How you doin', Mr. Morelli? Things have been a little slow down at the shop lately," King replied honestly. Before the slowdown the Kings and the AC staff had all been regular customers.

"I hear that, Billy! With this lousy oil embargo nobody has no money for nothin' no more," said Nick. "At this rate, gas is gonna go up to a buck a gallon! Can you imagine?"

"It looks like you're still drawing a crowd though," said King, gesturing to the knot of young people crowding around the Pong game.

"Yeah, the kids are comin' in, alright, but they don't buy nothin'. If I was smart, I'd get four more of those things and just shut down the kitchen," Morelli joked. "I'd make more money and have a tenth of the overhead costs."

"Maybe you should have a "two soft drink minimum" cover charge," offered Baker.

Bill King sidled up as close to the machine as the throng would allow. It didn't take him long to work out the basics of the game. It was nothing more than the kind of simple test program most electronics engineers wrote on cocktail napkins or other scrap paper in their idle moments. He had half a dozen similar loops and patterns scattered around his shop, but he never dreamed that people would actually pay cash money to play with them. He needed a peek inside the magic box.

"Mr. Morelli, you still close at nine?" King said quietly to the chef.

"I'll start closing up the kitchen at nine, but I'll let these jokers hang around until ten," said Morelli. "It's hard to turn away free money, ya know."

"Oh, I know," said King. "I'd sure love to have a look inside that thing, in private, if you know what I mean. It would be worth a hundred to you."

"Uh-oh! Do I even want to know?"

"It's just a wild hunch," said King. "But if it pans out I'll set you up with a whole chain of restaurants, or Pong parlors, or both! Morelli's will be even bigger than McDonald's! Whaddaya say?"

"Hoo-boy!" quipped the skeptical older man. "I better call the wife and tell her to start pickin' out curtains for the new mansion."

"You're a champ, Mr. M." King's mind was moving at a mile a minute. "I won't need more than twenty minutes, tops. Oh, and there's one other thing…"

"What's that, Rockefeller?" said Morelli, waiting for the catch.

"Will you take an IOU on the hundred?"

"Son of a…," he started, but broke into a hearty laugh before he could finish his thought.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Don West came to with a sudden jolt. He was temporarily disoriented and his muscles were twitching, probably the result of a steroid introduced into his drip tube by the computer. Once he got his bearings, West was determined to get out of his glass coffin and back on his own two feet. There was much work to be done and the game clock was winding down. West needed to know where the _Jupiter_ was and how far it was to the nearest soft landing.

Gingerly, and with great effort, West raised the golden outer visor to his helmet, giving him his first clear view of the upper deck. The cryo-tubes were oriented horizontally during flight and rotated slowly along their main axis to prevent the occupants from developing pressure sores while in suspension, so there was no telling which way one would be facing when they came to. The tubes would lock upright into a vertical position for loading and unloading.

"Just like the greasy hot dog rollers at the Gas-O-Mart," thought West, though his meat-filled casing only rotated once every twenty hours. At the moment, his cryo-tube was facing nearly straight up and West could make out the curved ceiling of the upper deck. So far, so good.

Without warning, a dark apparition filled the window immediately above West's face and flashed a deep red light into his eyes. The light was followed by the now-familiar pounding on the side of the cylinder. West nearly jumped out of his skin. A high pitched tone wailed in his helmet as his suit's built-in EKG sensors registered his erratic heartbeat.

Something was out there and it was trying to get at him.

"What the hell?" yelled the terrified pilot, speaking his first words in decades. Flat on his back, weak as a kitten and thirty feet from the nearest weapon, Don West had never felt more vulnerable in his entire life. His heart pounding and his breath coming in deep gulps, there was nothing he could do but watch and wait.

After a small eternity, the creature adjusted its position, moving back slightly from cryo-tube so that West could make out some of its features in the dim light. In a moment, West's terror morphed into anger as he recognized the clear sensor bubble of the _Jupiter 2_'s robot. After every third beat on the side of the tube the red light would flash again and he could make out the Robot's muffled mechanical voice calling to him. West swore a blue streak to himself.

"Major West. Are you conscious? Major West?" followed by the clang, clang, clang of a metallic claw on the side of the cryo-tube.

"Awake! I'm awake, damn it!" coughed West in a ragged voice he barely recognized. "You damn near scared me to death! What's going on here?"

"My apologies, Major, but your services are required on the flight deck. The _Jupiter 2_ is entering a critical stage in its flight profile."

As West struggled to make out the Robot's words it dawned on him that the voice was muffled because it was coming from outside of the tube and not through the radio in his helmet. Sound didn't travel through a vacuum so there must be some sort of atmosphere on the upper deck.

"What are the conditions on the deck, Robot?"

"Upper and lower decks are nominally pressurized. Internal temperature is 12 degrees Celsius and rising," came the report.

"My heads-up display indicates no pressure on either deck, and why aren't you coming in on my headset?"

"Your indicators are in error, Major, and all transmitters aboard the ship were cycled off, per your command. Upper and lower decks are nominally pressurized. Internal temperature is now 14 degrees Celsius and rising."

"Per MY command? What command? I never gave any such order. What the hell are you talking about?" West was livid now and even more confused than before. Not only did such an order make no sense whatsoever, it went against every Alpha Control flight directive. Without an active transponder there was no way to track the progress of the ship in flight. To the people on Earth it would appear as though the _Jupiter 2_ had suddenly vanished into space. Or was destroyed…

"Per Flight Directive 5217, command line 19, issued by West, Donald E.: At Mission Elapsed Time 34,822 hours from launch, _Jupiter 2_ is to maintain complete radio silence for the duration of the flight. Override security code, West, Donald E., confirmed, Earth date: 08/10/52."

"Twenty-fifty-two," West thought, "that's nearly five years into the flight and more than half way to Alpha Centauri." There was no possible way for Alpha Control to track the ship from that distance without a strong radio beam. West needed to sit up and clear his head. He had a thousand more questions for the Robot, but so far every answer only generated more questions, and none of them made any sense.

"Robot, initiate unloading sequence for my cryo-tube."

"Affirmative."

West was relieved that at least the Robot was responding to his direct commands. It was possible to blow the hatch on his cryo-tube from within, but it was a very risky procedure, especially for his shipmates. If their tubes were damaged by debris from his hatch their odds of surviving through to a normal reanimation were worse than nil. He could make out the squat figure of the robot wheeling into position to raise his tube and initiate a more controlled egress process. The robot's three-fingered claws were designed to operate all of the manual controls and switches with as much dexterity as a human, but he was also configured to access most of the ship's systems by wireless remote control.

Don West watched as the more familiar architecture of the flight deck come into view as the robot swung his cryo-tube slowly into an upright position. He became aware of his own body weight on his long-unused legs, his knees buckling involuntarily, wedging against the side of the tube and propping him up precariously. West had a sinking feeling that this was not going to be a dignified process.

"Break the seal."

"Affirmative." The Robot issued a wireless command to the cryo-tube control chip, which in turn began the process of equalizing the internal pressure with that of the upper deck. West had little choice but to believe the Robot's pressure readings, but he was still sealed in his space suit. Even if there was no pressure out there he would still be safe, for a few hours. The bigger worry was how he was going to keep from crashing to the deck once the hatch was opened. In a matter of seconds West could hear the sticky crackling of the ancient O-rings on his tube hatch as they gave way. Without the side of the tube to prop him up, West began to lurch forward before shifting his weight to his elbows. He hung there precariously for a moment, unable to stand and unable to sit. Catching a glimpse of the collapsible wheelchair the Robot had moved into place alongside the cryo-tube, West's initial reaction was a steadfast "No way!"

Discretion being the better part of valor, though, the Major gratefully allowed the Robot to guide him clumsily into the wheelchair, relieved that there was no one awake to see him in such a helpless state. There was nothing elegant about the transfer, but it was better than the inevitable swan dive onto the cold, hard deck, and West sat quietly as the Robot disconnected the various wires and tubes that still attached the Major to his high-tech cocoon.

By the reckoning of the ship's calendar, West figured he was chronologically in his early sixties. By Earth's accounting, he'd be pushing ninety and at the moment he sure felt like it. The effort of supporting himself in the tube now made the simple act of keeping his head upright nearly impossible. As the last of his meager energy supply slipped away, West felt his head tip forward as he obeyed the call of the golden slumbers one more time.


	6. Chapter 6

Bill King had been as good as his word and better. He and Mike Baker only needed ten minutes alone with Nick Morelli's Pong game to figure out how it worked and to document the components. King knew in an instant the principle behind the machine and how he could build a better game in no time.

"If people are willing to pay money to play this simple thing," King mused to himself, "What would they say to a game that offered a _real_ challenge?"

King already had the perfect program in mind and it wouldn't take much to turn it into a game.

"Mike, what do you think we could do with our standard joystick test program?" King asked.

"Well, we already use it to move a cursor through a maze," Baker replied. "But we designed it to test the hand/eye coordination of professional fighter pilots. We'll have to dumb it down a little for the Average Joe."

"Dumb it down, pal. Lobotomize it if you have to. If people will pay cash for Pong they'll go nuts for what we can offer!" King was beside himself with anticipation. It wasn't the kind of work he had in mind when he opened Alpha Control for business, but it certainly might bring in some much-needed revenue. He could always sell it under a subsidiary name.

Within a week, King and Baker had designed a program that did nothing but amuse. Using an Alpha Control joystick, anyone with a quarter could move a dot of light through a series of increasingly intricate mazes. As long as the players didn't touch the walls they could move on to the next level. Mike Baker suggested adding some sort of bonus points or prizes to be hidden along the way. Harkening back to his classical Greek mythology studies, Bill King named the game _Manny the Minotaur_ in a nod to the half-man/half-bull creature who inhabited King Minos' fabled labyrinth on the Isle of Crete. The moving dot was recast as the closest thing to a minotaur as the primitive graphics of the day would allow.

King contacted a national arcade game company and offered to lease them _Manny_ in exchange for a flat cut of the profits. For every quarter the new video game swallowed, Katyco, the subsidiary named for the woman who first brought video games to King's attention, would receive fifteen cents. Of that, a nickel would go directly to Mike Baker and his new bride, Katy.

While a nickel never bought much as a rule, the ten million nickels Manny generated that first year brought the newlyweds half a million dollars, which was real money in the early 70s. The following year, King would name Katy Baker as the CEO of the subsidiary she had inspired. As several more games followed _Manny_ in quick succession, Katy found herself helming one of the most profitable companies in the country, and one of only a handful of women CEOs in the world. Katy was the first of many women Bill King would name to senior positions over the years, a policy he would never regret.

With half a dozen successful game titles behind it, Katyco soon became a major source of revenue for Alpha Control. The infusion of cash allowed King to turn his attention to projects he thought were worthwhile, rather than scrambling to meet artificial deadlines imposed by government contracts. He was wise enough to recognize that the game division's rapid success had more to do with good timing than high innovation. Soon, the millions of dollars generated by the video game craze would flood the field with competitors and King would probably sell out and roll the profits back into Alpha Control, where his heart and mind really was.

It was another warm May evening, a full year after the Great Pong Raid, when Bill King was finally able to get back to Morelli's pizzeria.

"Holy cats!," growled Nick Morelli, affecting an exaggerated theatrical squint. "The face looks familiar but I just can't place the name."

"I know. I know. I've been gone a long time, and I'm sorry," said King, meaning it.

"I was startin' to think I'd never collect on my marker," Morelli chided, pointing to a framed napkin on the wall behind the register, signed by King and stating "I owe Nick Morelli a hundred." "I ain't a young man no more," he joked.

"Shoot! I should live so long!" countered the younger man. "I've come back to clear my good name and pay my debt to society."

"Screw society, gimme my C-note," laughed Morelli.

King reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a check, which he handed over to Morelli with a flourish. He watched the other man's face as he read the document. At first Morelli playfully pointed to the handwritten sign taped to the register that read "No Checks!" but within a few seconds, for the first time in many, many years, Nick Morelli found himself speechless. The amount on the check read $100,000 dollars. The note on the "Memo" line read: "Consulting Fees."

"Sweet sufferin' Marie!" was the best Morelli could come up with, as he half-collapsed onto a nearby stool. "Billy, I thought you meant a hundred bucks. I can't take this!"

"Yeah you can, Mr. Morelli. You've given me a lot of great advice over the past few years and you deserve to be rewarded for it. I wouldn't be where I am today without you. I want to make you one of my chief consultants."

"Hell, I don't know nuthin' about no computers!"

"You don't have to. All I need is an honest man who will give me his honest opinion whenever I need it."

"You sure this check is any good?" said Morelli with a smile.

"I'd cash it as soon as you can," laughed King. "We're in a fickle business, you and I."

"Geez!"

The pizza business had been very good to Nick Morelli and over the decades he and his wife had squirreled away a sizable nest-egg for retirement, but this boon had completely changed the game. Every May 7th, for the next fifteen years, Bill King would stop whatever he was doing, wherever he was in the world, and make a pilgrimage to Morelli's to consult his favorite consultant.

"Who's going to win the World Series this year, Mr. M.?" was the traditional question.

"The Boston Bruins, of course!" was the traditional answer.

"That's a rather dubious prediction for a baseball tournament."

"Listen, Jack, who's the famous consultant here? You or me?" And the ceremony was complete.

Their business completed, King would order a pizza and a beer and hand his friend a six-digit check for his consulting advice. Morelli always tithed a tenth of the money to his church and split the rest between the Morelli Scholarship Foundation, a local orphanage and a city-wide soup kitchen. When Nick Morelli passed away years later, Bill King saw to it that his consulting fees continued to be distributed accordingly, in memory of his first mentor.

Over the course of his long life, people would call King many things. The one epithet friend and foe alike could agree upon, whether glowingly or grudgingly, was _generous_.


	7. Chapter 7

Several hours later, Don West sat in his wheelchair and stared blankly at the bank of gauges, switches and controls that lined main instrument panel under the three large plasma screens that served as the _Jupiter 2_'s main view port. The screens were mostly dark except for a couple rectangular data windows haphazardly placed near the bottom of the central panel. West could read the constantly updating stream of data easily enough, but so much of it made so little sense.

Shaking the cobwebs from his brain, Don West decided it was high time to stand on his own two feet again, and maybe even take a stroll.

"Robot," he called out.

"Affirmative."

"What are the latest readings on the main deck?"

"Deck pressure optimal and holding," droned the machine. "Temperature has stabilized at 22 degrees C. Gravity is point-nine-seven percent and dropping slowly."

"Point-nine-seven?" thought West. "We must be approaching a planet!"

Unlike the spacecraft of classical science fiction, the _Jupiter 2_ did not enjoy the luxury of artificial gravity, as no one had gotten around to inventing it yet. Instead, the forward motion of the ship simulated gravity through thrust, by pushing the upper and lower decks against any objects resting on them. As long as the ship's engines were firing, the occupants would experience the sensation of normal gravity. When the engines slowed the ship enough to slip into a planetary orbit, this faux gravity diminished as well. When the engines cut off altogether, as they did for much of the flight time between destinations, the _J2_ was as weightless as every other Earth ship to ply the depths of space. It was for this reason that the _Jupiter 2_ actually flew in space more like an elevator, in essence, moving _upward_, rather than in the horizontal plane of a flying saucer. Thanks to multiple cameras positioned around the outer hull, those watching the plasma view screens on the flight deck would never know the difference.

The _Jupiter 2_ was a technological marvel that relied on a number of tried-and-true systems to make its fantastic flights. The ship's hull had been fabricated from local materials at one of Alpha Control's largest lunar bases. Titanium was plentiful on the far side of the Moon and solar energy was intense and cheap during the fortnight-long lunar days, making the base ideal for shipbuilding. The Moon also provided the radioactive materials for the basketball-sized sphere that powered the ship's nuclear reactor. The engines, fittings and mechanical equipment from the ship were ferried in from the Earth and assembled on site.

The _Jupiter_ employed a three-stage flight profile. When launching from a planet with a thick atmosphere, such as the Earth, the ship's nuclear reactor powered a large ducted fan assembly ring at the bottom of the hull. The huge turbofan rotated at high speed, providing enough vertical lift to raise the giant ship thirty feet into the air. At that point, the thrust would be vectored aft and the ship would break its hover and move forward. The saucer-like hull of the _Jupiter 2_ had been designed to take advantage of the natural lifting properties of the shape. As the ship moved forward, like the flying saucer it resembled, it generated lift. The faster it went, the higher it went, until the atmosphere thinned out at around 25 miles up.

At that altitude, a series of small gas core reactor rockets kicked in, using liquid hydrogen and oxygen as a propellent and generating a high rate of thrust. Space jocks referred to it as "the kick in pants" due to the swiftness of the acceleration, though anyone in suspended animation would remain oblivious to the stress. This provided the boost to put the J2 into orbit, and eventually, the additional momentum required to break free into open space. The beauty of the system was that the propellants could be safely stored during the long flight as water, or ice, until needed and then it was a simple matter for the reactor to generate the electricity required to break the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The chemistry and physics were so basic that Jules Verne could have designed the system with ease.

Once in open space, after a relatively short burn that brought the _J2_ up to cruising speed, the nuclear rockets would shut down and the real miracle of the flight would begin. The sleek ship's giant ion engine would wink on, again, using electrical power from the core to fire a pulse of deutronium ions out into space. The effect was mild, compared to the first two stages of flight, but the constant, gentle push the system provided added up over time. Within a couple years the _Jupiter 2_ would eventually attain a velocity of 80 percent of the speed of light. It was the miracle that made interstellar flight practical, and in combination with the disruptor field, it was what made _manned_ interstellar flight possible. Ion propulsion had been around for decades and had the advantages of safety and simplicity, which were important factors when the crew was in suspended animation. Deutronium was a man-made isotope of hydrogen that provided twice as much thrust as conventional ion propellants. Although Alpha Control did not discover deutronium, it was their scientists who first grasped the isotope's potential for interstellar flight and devised better ways for producing and storing the gas.

Half-way through the flight the _J2_ would simply rotate 180 degrees in space and its trusty ion thrusters became a slow-but-sure retro rocket, gradually decelerating the ship as it neared its destination. Once in the desired solar system, the nuclear rockets would provide the hard braking required to put the ship into planetary orbit, and to break that orbit to either land directly on an airless body or to slow the hull down enough for the ducted fan system to engage. While it didn't have the flash and panache of fictional starships, the _Jupiter 2_ was still an awesome technological achievement that performed its fantastic mission while obeying the Laws of Physics. As such, the final phases of the spaceflight would end as the journey had begun, in near weightlessness. As the ship slowed down the illusion of gravity would ebb away accordingly.

West's eyes moved to the data panel monitoring the ship's re-entry systems. The _Jupiter 2_ had been generating hydrogen and oxygen for weeks in anticipation of the braking burns and their respective storage tanks were nearly full. Don never liked sitting on that much volatile fuel, but with the supply of nuclear power and deutronium gas running perilously low, he was thankful to still have at least one viable option on hand. In a pinch, West could fall back on his years of experience to perform some fancy maneuvers to locate a planet, pull into a parking orbit and bring the _Jupiter 2_ in for a landing on rocket power alone. Landing, of course, being a relative term; sometimes you walked away from one and found a cold beer, and sometimes you created a brand new crater, which they might even name after you in your honor. It was always the last few meters of a flight that proved the trickiest, but that's why they paid him the big bucks, which, West mused wryly, he'd never collect now, and even if he did, money was worthless out here.

West tucked that thought back into its mental compartment and determined to get some answers to a long list of very important questions.

"Robot. Help an old geezer to his feet!"

"Affirmative," replied the Robot as he wheeled into position next to the Major. West got a grip on the cool metal of the Robot's outer shell while the machine extended a claw-tipped arm around the man's back for support.

"Right. We lift on three, and with some dignity this time, if you please. Remember, I'm a little rusty."

"That does not compute."

"Whatever," sighed the Major. "Ready? One... two... threeeee!"

The _Jupiter_ mission's environmental control robot had been designed to perform multiple functions. It monitored the progress of the ship in flight, it would conduct environmental assays of the new planet upon landing, and it would be essential for fabricating and assembling the components for a new colony; everything from construction materials to microchips. It would even construct other robots to provide much-needed labor around the camp. The Robot was programmed for numerous useful tasks and could even perform minor surgery on humans. As a rule, it maintained a rather low, squat profile, to keep its center of gravity close to the ground, but it could also extend its height to more than two meters. Lifting gently, the machine slowly rose up in height, gently helping the pilot to his feet.

"Oh, man...," groaned the Major as he struggled to maintain his balance. He was sure he hadn't heard that much snap, crackle and popping since he was a kid, eating his breakfast cereal in front of the TV. "Space travel is glamorous." Isn't that how the flight school brochure had read? "So glamorous..."

After a minute or two, West was able to release his grip on the Robot and stand on his own, though he made sure that the machine stayed close at hand.

"Well, let's open a window and see where the hell we are. Robot, light up the view port." The Robot complied by issuing a wireless command to turn on the large plasma screens. Even though the _J2_ was facing away from the parent star of this solar system, background stars poured more light onto the flight deck than it had seen in decades. West involuntarily brought he forearm across his eyes and took one shaky step backward. Soon the Major's eyes adjusted to the light and he was able to take in the panoramic view. As many times as he had looked out into open space, it still took his breath away for a moment. West tried recognize any familiar constellations by sight, but with no luck. It was if he was seeing the stars for the first time. Up in the right-hand corner of the display he could see a greenish-blue dot, about the size of a dime. It was definitely a planet, thought the Major.

"I think we've found our new home," he said out loud.


	8. Chapter 8

Although his Katyco subsidiary was bringing in hard cash in the mid-70s, Bill King was wise enough to realize that it couldn't last forever. As with any gold rush, a few people who get in at the beginning make the most money before the field is overrun by other prospectors. Designing video games also wasn't King's strong suit and so he gradually moved Alpha Control away from the software end of the business and into producing the hardware that made the machines work. As video game fever swept the country and the world, King turned his attention toward designing and building the joysticks and other controls needed by the full-sized arcade games, and later, for the home consoles that would be sold by the million. Bill and May King often mused over how much success ol' Manny the Minotaur had brought them.

The steady income allowed Alpha Control to focus on its primary mission of creating maneuvering systems for aircraft and even spacecraft. The 1970s saw an evolution away from the traditional method of steering aircraft with heavy hydraulic controls in favor of lighter, nimbler fly-by-wire computer systems. The only limiting factors to that advanced system were the primitive computers of the day, and, as always, the relative frailty of the human pilot. King was just the man to deliver the integrated hardware/software packages that made the systems work. Naturally, Alpha Control's biggest customer was the US military and its NATO partners. Bill King knew he was back in the death delivery business once again, but the Cold War was still in full-swing and national defense was paramount.

Alpha Control was making the Kings very wealthy, but Bill and May continued to live as average a lifestyle as the situation would permit. King kept a very low profile, preferring to be rich, but not famous, which brought on an entirely different set of problems. Within a few years, Bill Junior was joined by a younger sister and eventually, a baby brother. The Kings lived in a modest home not far from the growing Alpha Control complex. Bill would walk or bike to work every day, blending in with the hundreds of other AC employees entering or leaving the plant, although he was the only one on the payroll to be shadowed by plain-clothed private security guards. King enjoyed the morning ritual immensely, until the whole thing nearly came crashing down on him and his family.

May King knew she was marrying a workaholic but had no intentions of allowing him to be totally subsumed by Alpha Control. Both she and Bill were very fond of nature and enjoyed taking the kids on weekend camping trips in the nearby mountains. May had one iron-clad rule that her husband dared not disobey: No Work! No notebooks, no draft memos, no reports, no nothing. May and the kids received Bill's full attention for duration of the trip. King would only shrug his shoulders and explain to his fellow workaholics at the plant that if they had any questions about the policy they need only consult Mrs. King. There were no takers.

As their wealth grew, the couple decided it would be prudent to include security guards on their camping trips. Though the guards maintained a discrete distance from the family, May hated the loss of privacy, but appreciated the need for safety. One beautiful summer weekend taught the Kings that safety was a relatively fleeting commodity. Upon reaching one of their favorite secluded campsites in the mountains, the family disembarked from their _Country Squire_ station wagon and were greeted by Brian Burns, a relatively new addition to the security team, and two other men that King did not recognize.

"Good morning!" greeted Burns cheerily, as the three men neared the car. "Looks like a beautiful weekend in store."

"Morning, Brian," said King, as he maneuvered himself between Burns and the family. Something didn't feel quite right. It was a feeling King had had since the previous night. Call it a Sixth Sense. "I'm afraid I haven't met your partners before," he said, eying the men suspiciously.

Burns' cheerful smile evaporated as he drew a small caliber handgun from his jacket pocket. "There's no need for introductions, Mr. King. We know who you are and there will be plenty of time to get acquainted while the arrangements for your ransom is made. No doubt such things will take a little time to orchestrate, even for your staff of crack professionals."

Gesturing toward May and the wide-eyed children who had gathered on the opposite side of the car, Burns spoke to her in a chillingly calm tone. "Mrs. King, we need you and the children to join us over here, please." Burns' associates both produced several short lengths of rope for the purpose of binding the terrified family.

"Stay where you are, May," said Bill King, in an equally calm voice and with a somewhat larger pistol in his right hand. "This will all be over in a moment."

A wide smile flashed across Brian Burns' face. "Well played, Mr. King, but I'm afraid it isn't going to be quite so simple. You see, I took the liberty of having the bullets in your favorite .44 replaced with dummies last evening. The weight is the same, but you'll find they lack much of a punch." Burns and his goons chuckled at the joke.

"Hmmm. I guess the joke's on me, then," said King, as he slowly lowered the handgun. "Oh, wait!," he said, as if suddenly remembering something important. "I didn't pack my .44 this morning. This is my Daddy's .45 from the War." With that, King fired off a round that barely missed Brian Burn's head, scattering bark and splinters as the heavy round slammed into a nearby pine tree.

"Drop it, Brian!" King shouted, pointing the gun at the other man's head. "I won't miss this time." Burns' mouth dropped open in surprise. His ears were still ringing from the shot, but he wasn't ready to give up without a fight.

"You're outnumbered, King!"

"Maybe. But I'll still take you down with me, Brian. That's good enough for me." King watched the two thugs behind Burns, while keeping an eye on the gun in Burns' hand. They were both pale and visibly frightened. Things weren't working out the way Brian had said they would. "Besides, it looks like your friends are having second thoughts about this project. I bet they'd run away if given the opportunity. Wouldn't you, boys?"

Though not the sharpest crayons in the box, the two thugs recognized an out when they saw one, and turned tail and fled into the woods. Suddenly, Brian Burns felt very alone, and very afraid.

"Bastards," he muttered, dropping the pistol in the dirt.

"Alright. Move over there and lie down, face-first and arms spread." King motioned to an open patch of ground between several trees. "May, darlin', come give me a hand for a second. You children stay right where you are for now."

May's fear had given way to anger as she came around the back of the station wagon. "You worthless piece of... I say finish him off now and be done with it!"

"Now, now, Darlin', we'll let the authorities take care of things. For the moment, please pick up some of those ropes and loop them up for me." King clumsily ran one loop around Burns' feet, at the ankles, and pulled it tight. He would need both hands to secure the man's wrists and he passed the heavy handgun to his wife, who took dead aim on the prostrate figure's head. "If he tries anything clever, Mrs. King, do whatever you feel is best."

"Give me an excuse," she hissed at Burns, "any excuse at all." But the fight had gone out of the would-be kidnapper and he meekly allowed King to tie his hands behind his back.

"I hereby place you under citizen's arrest," said King formally, for indeed it was the one formality that kept him from being charged with kidnapping himself.

King gently retrieved the .45 from his wife, not wanting any "accidents" to occur in the hand-off. He had seen May's temper over the years, but nothing like this state of rage before. The woman was livid.

"Are you up to taking a little drive, my love?"

"Of course I can drive, you fool! But what about you, and those other two?"

King smiled at the sharp reply. What a girl! "I'd like you to take the children and go down to the ranger's station. Send back the ranger and anyone else with a badge you can find. I'll hunker back behind these nice thick trees and keep an eye on Brian, here, and if his friends do decide to come back, which I strongly doubt, they'll have to come into my field of fire to get at me. I don't think either of them have the guts to try it. Brian will tell the authorities everything they need to know about those two. Kidnapping is a federal offense and I don't think Brian will take the fall alone."

While obviously pleased that he had saved his family from an unsavory fate, Bill King also felt the palpable loss of their freedom. Never again would he travel as openly or as freely as he had up until this point. His wife and children would never be exposed to such danger again. It was a huge loss.


End file.
